Kirk Honeycutt

This is a slick studio production with a huge movie star and top professionals occupying every production role so that the polish of this well-made film makes even homelessness look neat and tidy.

One either likes this sort of thing or not. Even fans might not buy the ending in which more people get wiped out than in Hurricane Katrina.

Certainly their musicianship and onstage professionalism are smooth, though maybe a bit too smooth. There is little spontaneity in anything they do.

The large cast, costumed and made up as filthy scalawags and sinister buccaneers, gives tremendous energy to every scene.

Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here. The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains -- somewhat -- but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better.

As usual, Zombie has added an element of camp fun to the proceedings with his clever casting of B-movie icons in small roles, including Dee Wallace, Brad Dourif, Danny Trejo and Sid Haig.

Where the film falters is Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers' adaptation, which fails to invest this world with strong emotions.

Mild vulgarity and discreet nudity garner the sought-after R rating, but this effort feels forced. The real "bad" here is the sheer formulaic nature of everything. There are no surprises but for once you don't much mind.

It's too loose and casual, all too willing to trade the writer's trademark wit and literary mischief for slapstick comedy.

The film does achieve moments of catharsis, but it can be heavy going.

As drama the film mostly serves to illustrate the two sides of this crucial social debate in Africa.

Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.

Alas, this is a remake without a reason. Alfie can no longer shock us.

While it aspires to draw the same audiences who admired "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero," The Promise is but a pale imitation of those landmark films.

This is a slicker, shallower exercise. It's hypnotic as it unfolds, but once the credit roll frees you from its grip, it doesn't bear close scrutiny.

The comedy is sloppy, crude and contains far too many misfires, but the film does capture the old ABA spirit in its ungainly struggles to wrestle laughs from seriously mediocre material.

The film never realizes its dramatic potential, choosing to take predictable story paths with obvious characters.

Predictable, cutesy and surprisingly short on genuine humor, Legally Blonde gets by thanks to the magnetic presence of Witherspoon.

The Hughes Brothers' measured, well-paced direction complements the comic-book simplicity of this narrative.

In the midst of this didactic, self-conscious movie about a high school shooting comes an extraordinary and intense performance by a young actress named Busy Philipps, which elevates the whole picture.

Geoffrey Sax, a British television director making his theatrical debut, lavishes enough craft on the paranormal thriller to send more than a few chills down the spine.

Unlike "The Sixth Sense," the film's key revelation might be too mild to jolt audiences. Some may even feel cheated.

A slick enough thriller about a presidential assassination attempt. It is also a rather mechanical, soulless affair that avoids politics or anything else that might clearly define who these characters are and why we should care.

A teen comedy that possesses a wickedly satirical streak.

As a thriller, The Debt performs many if not all the right moves. Where the John Madden-directed film gets into trouble is in wanting to deal with the Holocaust without being entirely a period film.

Jarhead refuses to engage in its own point of view toward events it depicts. So the film feels empty and tentative, uncertain of what if anything these events add up to.

Jennifer Lopez carries this thin concept about as far and as well as she can, with Alex O'Loughlin in his first leading-man outing managing not to get lost in the shuffle.

The effect is impressionistic and provocative, with the emphasis falling differently on scenes because of our knowledge or lack thereof.

An underwhelming vampire romance long on camp but short on emotional insight

The film, well made in every way, smartly focuses on an unlikely friendship between Gretel and the athlete who ultimately replaced her -- a high jumper who was later revealed to be a man!

Eyre does a fine job overseeing performances by a terrific cast that rings true until female hysteria takes over the final act. But in tone and theme, the film has all the hallmarks of playwright-screenwriter Marber's stark, uncompromising misanthropy, if not misogyny.

A throwback to the days when Disney would recruit second- and third-tier stars to stroll through indifferently written, modestly produced comic fluff that served as family entertainment.

The film would make a better fit on television or at one of Disney's theme parks. In cinemas, Heart & Soul is an odd duck, out of sync with the current generation of documentarians whose films dig deep into stories and issues the media generally overlooks.

La Ronde 2011-style is simply a game and its makers expert gamesmen. The film is never less than intriguing. But the artifice shows all too clearly.

A muted psychological mystery where filmmaker Hilary Brougher's interest in "solving" a possible crime is superseded by her investigation into matters involving denial, free will and the physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy.

The movie telegraphs its intentions too early and relies too much on a single actor, Johnny Depp, to achieve its emotional force.

Awesome will please fans of the band, but expect little crossover to nonfans. No new ground is broken here. From a cinematic point of view, Awesome represents simply a monumental postproduction salvaging effort.

The film is messy the way Piaf's life was messy: It's unafraid of extravagant gestures even when they fail to come off.

Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

Irish director Jim Sheridan, who has made his films in America in recent years, now delivers an American remake that hues closely to the original but loses some of its true grit.

The CG animation is nothing special, but the characters are surprisingly fun and the story is full of enough puns, wordplay and slapstick to elicit laughs from across the age spectrum.

Lemming does possess a mordant humor as it watches characters spin out of control. But the payoff is slight.

Suspect Zero has enough going for it to eventually develop a cult following. But compared to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven," it's still the minor leagues.

Devolves into a repetitive comedy that squanders a hugely talented cast.

The problem confronting writer Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan is that Potter lived a fairly uneventful life once you remove her success as an author.

The three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.

German-born director Robert Schwentke ("Flightplan") keep things moving briskly enough so that the leaps in time mostly obscure the leaps in logic.

Imagine Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" saddled with more sentimentality and sprinkled with a few more laughs and you pretty much have Last Chance Harvey.

Writer-director Preston A. Whitmore II throws enough soap opera for an entire TV season into a story that nearly -- but not quite -- sinks from the weight of all these implausible events. Animated acting and the sheer chaos of this squabbling family give the film a comic buoyancy.

Recycles just about every sentimental ploy and cliche from a raft of horse racing movies.

Because the entire audience knows what's going on, the filmmakers hope to distract viewers from storytelling weaknesses with an urgent sense of style.

Shyamalan does project genuine menace and suspense into this mundane location, especially in nighttime scenes. But the magic that would transport you from reality into fantasy is missing.

Macpherson keep things creepy and mystifying. But that damn videotape takes the edge off the mood both visually and dramatically.

It's still a gimmicky, tricked-out tale that is all too self-aware. But the film does keep you guessing and probably guessing wrong.

Unlike a Pixar cartoon that embraces as wide an audience as possible, Speed Racer proudly denies entry into its ultra-bright world to all but gamers, fanboys and anime enthusiasts. Story and character are tossed aside to focus obsessively on PG-rated action and milk-guzzling heroes.

The amount of enjoyment one gets out of the Harrison Ford crime-action thriller Firewall depends on one's tolerance for watching thugs terrify an innocent family for most of the movie.

The film is less of a drama than a tribute -- an ode, even -- to the spirit and tenacity of firefighters. Its makers hardly bother to explore the lives or motives behind their actions.

Below-the-line credits are terrific, which only increases an overwhelming sense of disappointment with the film's failed ambitions.

A true story of courage, determination and guts that deserves a more exciting approach.

A warm and fuzzy family movie, but you do wish that at least once someone would upstage the dog.

An old-fashioned doc about a sailboat race is well produced but lacks urgency and true insight

Hugely ambitious but often failing to live up to those ambitions, Terry Gilliam's long-awaited The Brothers Grimm emerges as a folkloric adventure that intermittently entertains.

The 3-D footage of Titanic does speak volumes, and sometimes the sheer fussiness of all the ghosts and archival images get in the way. As huge as the Imax screen is, when six different images vie for one's attention, it looks cluttered.

Comes off as an overly jokey but often quite entertaining spoof that should please families everywhere.

An arresting visual style cannot make up for lack of new information or viewpoints about the Green Revolution in 2009 Iran.

Designed to maximize the visual opportunities for Imax's cameras even as it minimizes the dramatic conflicts that make for a satisfying moviegoing experience.

Sticking to one joke in an unconscionably long film makes for a very stale, witless and repetitive comedy.

What a cast but what a disappointment.

Stalls at the intersection of fantasy and science fiction.

There is nothing we haven't seen here before in terms of chases, intrigue and betrayals, so for all its A-list cast and production values, the film comes off as routine.

An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.

All of this results in way too much relationship chatter and not nearly enough comedy, romance or even dysfunctional relationships. We want to laugh -- but at what?

Only one of the three episodes of the anthology film Eros delivers on the title's promise.

The film, while heartfelt and directed by multiple-Oscar nominee Lasse Hallstrom, is dramatically stillborn.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

This fascinating relationship gets smothered in pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue.

You do wish Pate and writer Thomas Moffett had gone for more wit given the outlandishness of the melodrama since it would be more fun to laugh at this than take it seriously.

Edward Norton serves as lead actor and producer, but even his star power won't help this misfire reach a wide domestic audience.

A downbeat story line layered with philosophical discourses will restrict the audience to fans of the animated genre.

While the film sometimes plays like an hour TV medical drama padded to reach feature length, Sawant achieves touching, naturalistic performances from a fine ensemble cast.

It merely recycles 1987's "Broadcast News" with only a single reference to YouTube.

Terrence Howard delivers another solid lead performance and competition swimming is a new arena for such films. Nonetheless, Pride is just plain trite.

A protracted and uninvolving affair in which men battle over issues that audiences may struggle to find compelling, and no central figure emerges to take command of the film.

Brilliantly sung by an extremely talented lyric theater company in Cape Town called Dimpho Di Kopane. Whether this all works will be a matter of opinion -- mine is that it does not -- but the experiment is fascinating.

Herbie: Fully Loaded is, pure and simple, a children's film.

Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously. One suspects, however, that Zaillian and a vast team of producers and executive producers that includes political consultant and pundit James Carville believe they are making a serious commentary on American politics. It comes closer to kitsch.

Noisy, standard-issue cop actioner.

The millions of man hours put into producing this techno shock and awe must be staggering. Everyone got his job done, but somewhere along the way, the movie got lost.

The movie so deftly mixes sentimentality, romance and bathos in just the right measures that her fans and maybe new ones will enjoy the new Miley.

Everyone's comments are thoughtful and articulate but everyone stays "on message" so steadfastly that no dialogue ever ensues. It's 20 people giving the same lecture.

While the sadism doesn't stoop -- rise? -- to the level of the "Saw" horror-thrillers, Vacancy does have a name cast.

In the end, an audience has far too much knowledge about Gregoire's movie projects and finances and far too little about what makes anyone here tick.

The movie so successfully raises the emotional and psychological stakes in the first half that not all audiences may like the film's reversion to con-artist form in the second. The con itself is preposterous and full of holes when we think back after the movie.

Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost.

The story is a sketchy, dramatically muddled rumination on familiar Williams themes about the Old South and its brave, beautiful, rebellion women always on the brink of love, suicide or madness.

A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.

So much is unspoken and this slice of reality is so thin and slow as to make the film downright unsatisfying.

Thanks to dynamic performances by Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez and a strong cast -- sometimes all but buried beneath irksome stylistic flourishes -- this dark and absurd melodrama certainly has raw energy.

A perky comedy aimed at young women that gets the job done with crisp efficiency.

Shaky story and predictable developments make this an off-key ballad.

Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so.

Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.

Following up on Morgan Spurlock's wildly successful indie film "Super Size Me," critics of fast food were hoping that a one-two punch would further raise consciousness among consumers and purveyors alike. Alas, Fast Food Nation is punchless.

A feeble medieval epic with a lackluster romance at its center.

This is a movie not built for subtlety, but it does tackle a subject American movies have mostly avoided -- that of racial profiling and the plight of Muslim-Americans.

Determined to be faithful to the strong, often shocking language and in-your-face drama in Marber's mannered writing, Nichols and his actors find no way to lift Closer into a realm that enlightens.

For comedy, director Peter Howitt relies on halfhearted slapstick as the script contains little of the sharp dialogue one might expect from a script written at least in part by Harling ("Steel Magnolias," "Soapdish").

The greatest failure of the film, written by David Wolstencroft, is its inability to enter into the lives of the Rwandans, Tutsi and Hutu alike. The movie never moves beyond the tragic facts to show us the human face of either victims or perpetrators. All we get are white people shaking their heads and cursing Western governments.

One ticket buys you cowboys, samurais, gangsters, ninjas, spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong martial artists, knife throwers and even Fellini-esque circus performers. But like kimchi pasta, some things aren't meant to mix.

The film does not lack for ambition both in terms of its themes and artistic design. Consequently, his (Jenkins) feature debut, while not flashy, shows promise. Clearly, here is a young filmmaker who wants to tell stories rather than deliver shocks and sensation.

Harrelson goes full bore from the opening scene and there are no scenes he is not in. But the effect is wearying rather than exhilarating.

A well-intentioned but unconvincing fable about a young boy struggling to overcome his fear of mortality.

Horror film buffs like to giggle as much as scream but there're no giggles here.

The result isn't an unpalatable pudding but rather a fair-to-middling children's film that is half CG-animation and half live-action.

The movie does say a lot about female athletes and the changing role of women in American society, but in aggressively pursuing the formula, writer-director-producer Tim Chambers is prone to exaggeration and a moralizing tone.

A perky though not terribly imaginative feature aimed primarily at youngsters.

Fur is a misfire by the talented people who four years ago gave us "Secretary," whose tongue-in-cheek approach might have served this film better, taking the edge off much of its pretensions.

Begins by repeating many gags from the previous film. Only now they feel lame and routine.

There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's The Good Night but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage.

A tweener but not necessarily a good one. It falls into the gap between good intentions and faulty storytelling.

The one-gag camp-athon has gone over big at gay film festivals, but in theatrical release this debut feature from theater/TV veteran Richard Day has limited appeal. Its best bet will be as a rental item.

So like much of this film, the viewer is turned into an observer. You never feel close enough to the action, either in the ring or in the kitchens, living rooms and tough streets where the story takes place. The characters engage you up to a point but never really pull you in.

It's a chick flick with a vengeance but even in its most sentimental moments, stars Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear make this feel-good-about-yourself movie feel ... well, good.

A disappointing and manipulative look at one family's loss in the Iraq war.

This family film is willing to tackle important issues such as burgeoning sexuality, alcoholism and a troubled home life but does so in a bland and unconvincing story.

The movie is a mixed bag, with many of the elements fun and intriguing, but since this is also a Michael Bay-produced movie, CG monsters and cartoon bad guys gum up a third act.

As the central character in this musical melodrama about step dancing in black fraternities, Short displays an uncanny dramatic sensibility to go with the eye-catching athleticism of his dance moves.

A relatively lame exercise that never achieves comic traction.

In the end, the gimmick is too risible and its effects on the characters too forced to sustain either suspense or horror.

Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.

Benji is back, which is good news for youngsters and pet-loving families. Film lovers perhaps should steer clear, however, as hokey melodrama and sloppy comedy fill the gaps between neat dog tricks.

A tad too conservative and calculated. CGI delivers best on moody sets and a noirish atmosphere achieved by lighting, backgrounds and visual effects. But the characters look like plastic dolls, and the story is recycled sci-fi.

A loud, disjointed and not terribly funny comedy, which probably is what one expects with a title like that. The unfortunate thing is, it didn't need to be.

The film never is boring, but it's never engaging, either, because its heroes hit every target in sight, while the villains, despite holstering much greater weaponry, never hit anybody. So forget about suspense.

Benjamin Brand's script never levels with a viewer.

A passable horror-thriller for the young crowd, assuming a movie can lure them away from PlayStations.

9 never adds up to much. It's a dark adult film that gives itself over to the chases and frights of a kiddie movie.

There is little complexity in the social, cultural or political shape of this world. So this film, directed by visual effects master Stefen Fangmeier and written by Peter Buchman in a straightforward manner, cannot escape the rote nature of such a fantasy.

Goldberger mistakes deadness for deadpan and mere oddness for that touch of genius that allows a first-rate filmmaker to get laughs out of the contrast between gruesome acts and mundane social concerns.

The ending underscores the old cliche about the banality of evil but getting there is meant to be the whole fun. For some people at least.

The movie seems more like a '50s science fiction film of extreme paranoia or an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that even at a swiftly paced 90 minutes feels padded.

For hard-core David Mamet fans only...Edmond serves to remind you how artificial the dialogue and dramaturgy truly was in early Mamet.

The characters are so over-the-top with emotional pain -- that they are hardly credible as characters.

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.

Macy once again brightens an otherwise mundane character.

The film wants to put on screen the sense of random play and concentrated games that fill a child's world for a few summers. In this it succeeds, but the film does not welcome others who might still retain memories of those NOT bummer summers.

A drama that is more contemplative at times than dramatic yet one containing several powerful moments.

The film, written (with Steven Rogers) and directed by Richard LaGravenese, is long and drags in places. But the chief problem is that "P.S." feels like a gimmick.

A formulaic yet clever chiller that offers generous doses of sex and violence aboard a luxury yacht.

The charisma and hard work by his two leads allows Boorman to succeed beyond all expectations.

This attractive cast may help get an audience, but they will surely puzzle over such a downward-spiraling story that lacks inner logic.

Green has chosen for his focus to fall on Enrique, in many ways the least interesting character in his story, rather than the son or even the mother who is surprisingly protective and understanding.

The film does not stand up to the current crop of music/concert films like "U2 3D," which brilliantly uses 3-D to show the Irish band in concert so as to encapsulate its relationship to its fans, each other and their own music, and "CSNY: Deja Vu," which hones in on the political connection Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have to their music.

The most un-Disneylike cartoon yet from Disney animation. The thing is a hellzapoppin' of eccentric characters, zany situations and wacky gizmos, but little effort has gone into making any of this connect with an audience.

It's all a bit bizarre. One soldier tellingly calls it "one big reality TV show," and the movie never makes clear whether such training does any good.

A wheel-spinner. The more the film stresses and strains to be funny, the unfunnier it gets.

Standard-issue superhero movie -- except that writer-director Guillermo del Toro, taking his cue from "Hellboy" comic book creator Mike Mignola, brings a wicked sense of humor to this particular monster mash.

Think of Please Give as a finely tuned short story with every glance and gesture full of suggestive meaning. Drama is not high on the agenda here. There is a bit of comedy and, briefly, sexual mischief even though it doesn't look like much fun.

The heist itself is almost dull, and the characters aren't half as colorful or interesting as they need to be.

In outline, the story is pretty funny, and the film's outlandish takes on sports-movie conventions deliver some laughs. But Thurber chooses the low road to those laughs so often that he undermines his own satirical design. His actors certainly deliver amusing, spirited performances, but again, they get done in by relentless adolescent humor.

The film lacks the depth and discipline of Mitchell's first film venture, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which makes Shortbus a real disappointment.

Rote characterizations and a trite, even condescending, attitude toward that era's misguided mores robs the film of the satiric punch Todd Haynes delivered in "Far From Heaven."

In her brave first feature, Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Zbanic tackles the theme of war's aftermath.

The mental and physical landscape would do justice to an Atom Egoyan film, but in this film, the key dramatic moments feel as forced as they are predictable.

Among the girls, Emma Roberts has solid scenes with Rockwell.

Based on a true story -- that never happened. That might explain why the film circles and circles its subject but never strikes dramatic pay dirt.

International audiences will be confronted by a rather predictable and highly implausible road movie that strains to achieve too many agendas.

Shorter and punchier but nearly as hokey as the original.

Bram Stoker would be, well, horrified.

The documentary is an act of political activism. Guggenheim and his politically conscious producers, Laurie David, Lawrence Bender and Scott Z. Burns, have no interest in either challenging Gore's viewpoint or giving opposing opinions equal time. The film is simply a conduit for Gore's message.

Limitless should be so much smarter than it is.

A hit-and-miss affair. It has moments of unexpected, offbeat comedy, but most of the time neither the characters nor the situations engage the viewer.

The result is a scary movie that is genuinely scary in parts, although an adult can't help noticing this is set in the very worn and tattered territory of the haunted-house genre. Then when you get a glimpse of the CGI critters causing all the mayhem, the scares completely vanish.

There are eight individual decisions to be made here, yet Beauvois never humanizes any of his monks. The film instead consumes itself with songs, communal prayers and nightly meals.

In "Virginia Woolf," George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for Revolutionary Road's Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don't they just get a divorce?

Reiner again demonstrates compassion and insight into young people's battles to acquire self-knowledge, but in his new film, too many clearly fictional characters and contrived situations bog down his story.

Despite the best efforts of stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, this new "Day" is tired and corny.

The actors do what they can with the cards they're dealt but can't overcome the nakedness of the dialogue or the characters' actions. Duke does ensure that the production flows smoothly though. And those frequent injections of comedy do wonders.

Skateland is every coming-of-age-after-high-school movie you've ever seen with a formulaic plot and well-worn characters.

Landing somewhere between a generational comedy and soap opera, the film is forgettable fun.

The film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.

A meticulously observed story about fathers and sons within the Argentine Jewish community...What the film desperately lacks, however, is any meaningful conflict. Thus, there is little story here.

A couple of rather Dickensian supporting roles by Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell fall embarrassingly flat as they are more creations of costumes and makeup than actual flesh-and-blood. But then the same can be said for the entire movie.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

Things are too predictable. Perhaps the viewpoint is to blame.

The story itself is silly and exaggerated.

Ultimately, its success may depend on how emotionally satisfying audiences find this flirtation with Jewish mysticism.

The movie is too parochial for a wide audience. The French judicial system is totally alien to Americans, for instance, plus the film is a talkathon.

Unfortunately, bees just aren't that funny...Nor is the odd story Seinfeld and his collaborators dreamed up very inspired.

While the film is made in English by a mostly Greek crew, Buzz"seems geared to foreign audiences. The film's "historians" spend too much time explaining things about Hollywood that are common knowledge to many Americans.

This isn't so much that the story and characters are weak -- though they very much are -- but that animatronics and computer animation so anthropomorphize these critters that they bear more resemblance to cartoons than actual flesh-and-fur animals.

The film is thought-provoking but not terribly involving.

In the sadism-for-thrills sweepstakes, P2 is no "Saw," but it will get young women to clutch their dates for a week or so in theaters before fading to DVD shelves.

Rendition tackles the concern in a heavy-handed thriller with simplistic characters and manipulative story lines.

Will richly award locals with sly in-jokes and a wonderful comic performance by Bruhl. Non-Germans will certainly get the essence of the humor but may find the movie long and repetitive.

But nothing taps his own particular talents to unsettle audiences with truly edgy material. Funeral gets no more edgy than a potty joke and a corpse tumbling out of a coffin. This is nothing more than juvenile slapstick.

It's overblown and extravagant business as usual.

Garcia has his moments as a wild man but the script never really allows him to plumb the artist's emotional depths.

This is a slap-dash effort whose producers threw money and stunts onscreen instead of the satirical gags and one-liners that made the old spy spoof so memorable.

The whole film, a comedy about crime and mental illness, seems at war with itself.

The humor emphasizes quantity over quality, but the batting average isn't too bad. And where else can you witness Leslie Nielsen do a nude scene?

Unconvincing melodrama.

Laziness permeates the film from the inexplicable escapes to the neglected romance.

If you take any of this seriously, you are not going to enjoy the movie very much. But as an absurd riff on baadasssss gangsta movies, Four Brothers has an undeniable visceral kick.

There is something really nasty about this cold, calculating exercise in mob psychology and human venality.

Plays like a pilot for a TV sitcom. It sets up enough story threads for an entire season yet nothing much actually happens during the 105-minute running time.

By focusing so narrowly on religious fundamentalists and bigots while ignoring any spiritual dimension to religion, the film is not only being disingenuous but limits its audience to non-believers.

The character and geographical jumps leave you in a muddle with thinly sketched personalities and confusing plot points. Worse, dialogue dense with nuance and shaded meaning flies by too quickly.

The result is not the train wreck one might anticipate from surfing the Net. The catfights, overacting and Berry's swagger in a skimpy, tight, leather outfit that would be right at home at a Hookers Ball make for campy fun.

The comedy has several inspired moments and a genuine flair for the satiric, but overall the film leaves you cold.

The disappointments here are many, from a starry cast the film ill-uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that Nine is not going to revive the slumbering musical-film genre.

McConaughey and Parker get stranded with thanklessly predictable scenes, while Zooey Deschanel, Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw garner the film's few laughs.

The film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity.

As convincing as the manipulated footage of the President's death in Chicago in October 2007 is, the movie itself cannot be more unconvincing in its approach.

Glorious so-bad-it's-good entertainment.

The film suffers from uneven acting, an over-reliance on production values and an uncertainty over how dangerous the children's adventures should be.

Works better than you might imagine at times but stumbles awkwardly other times. The unevenness in the writing is matched by directorial overkill in certain comic sequences.

An unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.

Thanks to the great Helen Mirren as the wife and Spanish actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the boxer, the film does create a convincing portrait of a late-flourishing love that takes everyone by surprise.

The movie ends just when complications start to set in, which makes you wonder how invested Allen really is in the little melodramas within this comedy.

Sustains a few icy chills, but a mix of genres muddles the story.

A muddled melodrama about the shady and questionable though not quite illegal world of "sports advisers."

The Game of Their Lives has a great sports story to tell, yet the filmmakers fumble it away.

Things spin swiftly out of control with uneven acting and misfired physical gags.

Might be a lame, formulaic comedy, but it sets up entertaining sequences cleverly designed for the talents of three of its stars and has the good sense to get out of the way and let audiences enjoy their performances.

The film is both too short and too long at two hours-plus. Not enough time is spent with the teens and far too much with their teacher.

Whatever one's view of Christian evangelical beliefs, from strictly a horror-film standpoint the movie needs a better villain.

A good idea for a sophisticated comedy lurks within the latest Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughn collaboration, Couples Retreat, but the filmmakers lack the courage of their convictions. So the payoff is mixed at best.

Too narrowly focused.

The best two performances belong to Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell. For the film to work, though, the two best roles should belong to Tony-winning Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the title roles.

One's appreciation of this film depends largely on one's ability to be amused by a Dadaist prankster and interest in the Pop Art scene in the middle of the last century.

An unstable mix of a tearjerker, junkie-recovery story and odd-couple pairing. The film marks the American debut of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, whose European films show a strong affinity for stories of human frailties and of families unraveling.

The movie never overcomes the triteness of its premise.

Call this one "Brother Act." Instead of Whoopi Goldberg's Reno lounge singer in "Sister Act," Preaching to the Choir has a hip-hop star hiding out from a gangsta record producer in his estranged brother-minister's Harlem church.

The film feels miscast. Neither Zeta-Jones nor Eckhart look the least bit comfortable in a restaurant kitchen. More troubling, they look downright uncomfortable with each other.

The cast is fine, but the roles are superficial and too concentrated on the film's theme.

An entertaining mess. It blends together musical styles and dances, historical periods with howling anachronisms, coy, almost childish gimmicks with R-rated sex and violence.

While visually lush and inviting, this insular, self-absorbed film is more a violation than a celebration of the lives of two of literatures foremost sensualists, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Little of Miller’s boisterous, anarchic spirit makes its way into this film. Nor is its superficial handling of Nin’s theme of a woman’s self-realization likely to satisfy her admirers.

Carell is getting quite good as these everyman characters but lacks the audacity of, say, a Carrey or a Robin Williams. He is making comedy out of dullness.

A one-note, lightweight, condescending comedy about the rubes of Idaho.

Chabrol has been making and remaking this film for six decades now. He seemingly will never tire of explaining how tired he is of the petit bourgeoisie.

Alda actually is kind of interesting as the mentally unstable uncle, but Broderick appears to be sleepwalking. Madsen has little to do, and everyone else plays things far too broadly.

Unfortunately, the music is as irresistible as the tired story of a musician succumbing to substance abuse is resistible.

A campy pastiche of horror and high-school movie cliches, the film only rises above standard-issue scare fare by dint of Cody's sneaky sense of humor.

Every scene is on the prowl for laughs at the expense of the inherent drama in the lives of its colorful characters.

It's a gutsy movie but not necessarily a good one. Its greatest strength is that it wants to talk about what's on our minds right now and not wait for historians.

How she (Dunham) made her movie is more impressive or at least unique than the actual story she chooses to tell.

The film works best as a kind of mindless, action-packed B-movie. But on the A-level at which recent science fiction/fantasy films operate -- meaning the "Spider-Man," "Harry Potter" and "Terminator" series -- this movie falls woefully short.

The comedy is obvious and flat while the drama is stale. They did do one thing right, however: They attracted a stellar cast.

Smith stumbles setting up dramatic confrontations and strains credibility a time or two with implausible moments.

Only in the loosest sense is X Games 3D: The Movie an actual movie. It is essentially a promotional film for extreme action sports and ESPN.

Keith Gordon's brave attempt to make cinematic sense of Potter's 1986 BBC mini "The Singing Detective" at least has the advantage of a screenplay finished by Potter before his death. But problems of style and tone bedevil the earnest effort.

For all its staleness, the melodramatic main story does contain enough good acting and resonant scenes.

May be too clever for its own good. Essentially, it's the story of weekend scientists who build a time machine in a suburban garage. But this nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture.

The film starts out as a gentle Hollywood satire, shifts abruptly into a comedy of (bad) manners, turns into a crime story and deviates into a suicide attempt before it reverts to a Hollywood satire with a happy ending. No Hollywood satire should ever have a happy ending.

Even the art house crowd will find the film off-putting not only because of its vagueness but because of its thoroughly unlikable characters.

Like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie.

It's a pretty lazy film in the creativity department save for the dogs.

The film leaves any opponent of the current administration with a discouraging ambivalence: On one hand, one wants to vehemently decry such tactics in American politics. On the other, one wants to know where the hell is the Democrats' Karl Rove?

Acting is similarly routine with the glorious exception of Hilton, who is so bad she steals the show.

No best in show but a decent family comedy.

Somewhat original and amusing. But only somewhat.

Gibson's intense concentration on the scourging and whipping of the physical body virtually denies any metaphysical significance to the most famous half-day in history.

Clooney, the film's director and star, can't make up his mind how to approach the story. One minute it's a romantic comedy. Then it switches to slapstick, then to screwball comedy before sliding into Frank Capra territory.

Maybe Humpday needed more characters and a less claustrophobic atmosphere. Maybe the film needed to be bolder and break a few boundaries itself. Maybe it could have better explained why these two men still need to be friends. Whatever the case, it certainly needed a better payoff.

The film just doesn't mine enough humor or drama from this situation. Meanwhile most of the developments are wholly predictable.

The film does get claustrophobic. It never quite achieves the balance between a two-character study and a larger world, as did "The Man on the Train." The film also could do with a bit more humor, most of which is supplied by the sagacious shrink.

At best, Racing Stripes should play nicely to youngsters with the cutoff for enjoyment extending no further than midteens.

A psychological thriller without bothering much with psychology. Come to think of it, the thrills are pretty much missing, as well.